A Chill in the Flame (Villains #1)

Five

Five

Now

“You’re dreaming.” Strong hands shook her as she screamed. Her throat was raw, ravaged from her nightmare. She continued to wail, barbed wire tearing from her stomach through her mouth as she cried.

Her body tipped as someone pulled her into a sitting position and crushed her into what was meant to be a comforting hug.

“Don’t touch me!” Ophir pushed backward. She struggled to open her eyes through the sting of tears only to see Harland. She gagged, choking on the lingering scent of roses, only to realize she was smelling smoke. It had been a memory. A nightmare.

The horror of reality crashed into the present moment. Harland’s hands were red and swollen with blisters and pain. Her nightdress had singed, falling to ashes as fire had claimed her in her sleep, swallowing her whole in its angry, orange flame. She commanded the fire and it vanished, but that did nothing for the destruction it caused in her sleep. He’d reached through the fires night after night to shake her from her horrors, freeing her from the unspeakable memories that broiled her from the inside out.

“Your mother is here to see you, Princess,” Harland said, teeth clenched against the pain.

Ophir winced at the sight of his blisters. “Harland, I…”

She wanted to apologize. Not just for his hands, or for yet another pile of ashes in a long line of ruined royal furniture, but for everything. For Caris. For being the reason Aubade wept. For the fundamental brokenness within her. The one thing she didn’t want was to be left alone with her mother.

“You have nothing to apologize for.” She didn’t notice the attendants cowering at the doorway until he beckoned them in. One woman threw a robe around her shoulders while others began to sweep the sooty evidence of her night terrors. The attendants were a flurry of hairbrushes, perfumes, healing tonics, dressing gowns, and every such power necessary to make the room acceptable for the queen.

Ophir rarely met with the king and queen. Their titles as mother and father were secondary to their roles as monarchs to the land. Farehold was their firstborn child.

As children, the girls had taken at least one meal per day with their parents in the formal dining hall. Her mother had loved to play with them in the garden, and her father had enjoyed attempting—and failing—to teach his daughters archery and horseback riding. As the years had gone on, their visits had become more infrequent. The king and queen had a kingdom to attend to, and duties on which to focus. They’d join their daughters for meals several times per week as the years stretched on, but Ophir had rarely darkened the doorway of the war room. She’d made herself intentionally scarce in all matters of politics and diplomacy, and they’d allowed her to distance herself from the responsibilities of monarchy.

She’d stood dutifully beside her parents at Caris’s funeral, but there had been no bittersweet embraces, no comfort, no kindness. They’d have to be fools not to know that Ophir was responsible for Caris’s death. She couldn’t bring herself to ask.

“Can you stay?” Ophir whispered to Harland.

His shoulders slumped. “I’ll be right outside.”

Harland ushered the attendants out the moment Queen Darya entered, closing the door behind her.

Ophir looked around uncertainly for somewhere for her mother to sit. The woman’s expression was strained but not unkind as she perched on the edge of the ruined mattress. She patted the unburned patch of cloth beside her. She took Ophir’s hands in her own as soon as her daughter took a seat.

“I like what you’ve done with the place,” the queen said quietly. Her eyes were glassy with the threat of tears. The corner of her lips twitched in the barest of smiles.

“I’m redecorating,” Ophir replied, matching the weak attempt at humor.

“Ophir…” The queen closed her eyes. A single tear spilled over her cheek as she did so. The queen tightened her grasp on her daughter’s hands. “Your father and I fear we’re losing you, too.”

Ophir’s throat constricted as she watched her mother’s face. They knew of Caris, yes, and of Ophir’s nightmares, but she wouldn’t have chosen these words if Harland had informed his king and queen about her night at sea or the long-gone wet stranger in her room.

Good. They had enough on their plates without adding that burden.

“I don’t know how to stop picturing it,” Ophir replied at last. “She’s there, even when I sleep.”

“It’s breaking me to know I’ve lost one child while the other was returned to me broken. We need you to be strong, Ophir. Your title comes with privileges, and with responsibilities. Your sorrow is not yours alone. You carry all of Farehold with you, and the people need to see your chin held high. If it helps, there are tonics for your suffering,” said the queen. Her eyes fluttered open. Her tears found their stride as she looked into her daughter’s eyes. “I’ll send for a healer who can help you with a dreamless sleep.”

Ophir wanted to say that a healer might treat a symptom but would do nothing for the problem. She didn’t want a healer. She wanted to be held. To be heard. To share tears, rather than hear from the servants’ whispers that the queen had been crying herself to sleep night after night. She opened her mouth to explain herself, but nothing came out. Instead, she stared at the woman who was more queen than mother and who would visit, as was proper, but who so rarely gave Ophir the maternal love she craved.

“Give your burdens to the All Mother,” the queen said. “I’ll pray with you. Close your eyes.”

So, Queen Darya led them in an empty prayer. It was a petition to protect the kingdom, to heal Ophir, and to guard Caris’s soul in the afterlife. When the queen left, Ophir felt emptier and more alone than if her mother hadn’t visited at all.

Three weeks had passed since the kingdom mourned the loss of their beloved princess. Three weeks had crawled on its hands and knees over glass. Four times throughout that bitter month, Queen Darya had made Ophir think that perhaps the woman knew how to be a mother, after all. Four miserable, aching nights, she had let herself into Ophir’s room at night when her sobs were too loud for the castle to bear and touched her hair until she fell asleep. Three weeks were marked by ruined bedsheets, by burning furniture, and by a sleep-deprived Harland bursting through the room and battling the fire to get to her. The night guard who typically relieved him during sleeping hours had been chased away by Harland’s unwillingness to leave her to face her demons alone.

Ophir found no peace in sleep. Visions of the tragedy raged behind her closed lids when she was awake, and she relived their savagery in her dreams.

The servants murmured about the loss of their kind, gentle royal. The advisors needed the world to remember that not only had Farehold lost its saintliest monarch, but Raascot had been robbed of its future queen. Ophir clutched her pain, knowing it was her final tie to her sister. Anguish was not an emotion she wanted to share. She resented King Ceneth and his suffering as the world looked only at his loss, rather than hers. The King of Raascot and his people had attended the burial ceremony with his armed guard, grieving the loss of his betrothed. They’d planned for peace and unity for the continent’s humans and fae. Together, he and Caris were going to usher in a new era of prosperity. When she died, all hope had perished with her.

Ophir took a small solace in the vengeance enacted by the royal family.

Berinth’s manor had been brought to rubble. Nothing remained of his estate, and his grounds had been salted and cursed. The lord had not been recovered, but any man affiliated with their fateful soirée had been burned without ceremony and left in the unmarked graves of the manor’s ruins. Investigations into the nature of his profane and terrible gatherings had met a number of dead ends, as no one seemed to know much about the mysterious lord, nor the other men Ophir had found in the room that night. From the little they’d learned of the man, he’d arrived in the lands beyond Aubade only one decade prior, after inheriting the lands and title from his wealthy, established uncle.

If Ophir had to be awake, she’d spend the time in prayer. Dwyn had suggested vengeance, and goddess almighty, how Ophir longed for a world with justice. She’d never been religious, but if there was an All Mother, perhaps the goddess would do what she could not and smite Lord Berinth where he stood.

And so the days had gone on, with Ophir praying to a goddess she didn’t believe in, drowning her sorrows in red wine, shriveling and pruning in the bath, and dozing in and out of sleep for weeks.

Night after night, Ophir woke to Harland’s frantic attempts to help, just like he had the night of the party. Somehow, Ophir’s ever-vigilant guard had awoken that morning knowing some horror had befallen. He hadn’t knocked in those first lights of dawn.

Harland had burst into Ophir’s room with the ferocity of someone who knew something was terribly, terribly wrong. He’d startled the night guard who had fallen asleep on watch and tumbled from his chair. After yelling at the negligence of the overnight guard and flinging open the door, he’d found her bed empty. A servant had discovered a despondent Ophir hours later.

They hadn’t anticipated that a grieving member of the royal family would need increased security detail to ensure she stayed in her room while Aubade planned a funeral, but a mere forty-eight hours after Caris’s death, Harland had been shocked to find a naked stranger with a towel in her hair and a soapy princess surrounded by the sandy evidence of her trip to the beach. Dwyn had been all too happy to tell Harland that his charge had attempted to kill herself. She patted him on the shoulder and told him to do a better job before slipping into the shimmery, salty starlit gown that she had worn when she’d carried Ophir in from the sea. Dwyn had disappeared from the castle without another word.

The weeks had stretched into more than a month, and the young princess had not seen the siren again. Memories of Dwyn and wishful thoughts of vengeance were fleeting. Ophir supposed she’d never know if the All Mother answered her prayers for justice, which was just another helpless thing worth mourning.

She hadn’t answered questions about Dwyn. She hadn’t answered questions about Caris. She hadn’t answered questions about anything. Ophir had disappeared into herself, growing quieter and smaller with every day that passed. She was slipping away while the fire ate her.

“It won’t hurt me.” Ophir frowned at Harland’s blistered, bandaged hands.

“It’s already hurting you,” he replied.

Once she was fully awake and knew she was safe, he would leave her room once more, and she would go back to being completely and utterly alone.

Ophir had been strong once. She had been wild and charming and powerful. She hadn’t needed protection from anyone or anything.

Until she did.

One month became three. Early summer had grown unbearably hot, its sweltering air boiling the residents of Castle Aubade no matter how many charmed fans or spelled objects they used to keep themselves cool. The sweltering weather was the only thing that pushed Ophir from her room, chasing her beyond the cliffs to sit on the edge of the waters, allowing her to dissociate into the horizon where sky met sea and the waters could lap against her feet. The hottest summer on record slowly faded into the early, cooling days of autumn. No matter how many suns set or moons passed, her heart would not heal.

Others seemed to be moving on with their lives. Caris’s bedroom had been sealed shut, never to be used again. Portraits and statues were commissioned to honor her. Commemorative charities were started in her name. A holiday of cherry blossoms was named for the late princess, to be honored every year on the anniversary of her death. The days went on and clocks continued to tick away their time as if nothing had changed; people resumed their duties and their laughter and their visions for the future. Yet Ophir grew smaller, and smaller, and smaller.

She’d wasted into such a gaunt, sallow state that healers had been called and servants were ordered to sit with her and monitor her nutrition, reporting back on her daily intake of food. Spiritual advisors from the All Mother and even from the temples of the lesser-known deities were called to her bedside to beseech anyone who would listen on behalf of their youngest daughter. Holy priestesses from temples across the continent were summoned, though they had no answer for how to heal that which had broken within her.

The king and queen had already lost one daughter, Ophir supposed. They couldn’t risk another.

Ophir had abandoned her life of parties, preferring to drink herself to sleep most nights and wake up with a pounding headache and a sick stomach with every passing morning. As she had done in the summer’s blistering heat, she continued to wander down to the beach and allow the shells to cut into her bare feet. She’d walk into the ocean up to her calves while Harland, her ever-present shadow, stayed at a careful distance. She wandered the shores and cliffs a few times per week whenever the weather allowed, but never again did she see the strange woman who’d brought sand and salt into her bedroom and crawled into the tub’s soapy waters with her. The fae hadn’t only saved her from the ocean that day. Dwyn’s bizarre levity in the moments following the incident had kept Ophir from breaking. The treacherous way in which Dwyn had informed Harland of her attempt had been an act of kindness, even if it hadn’t felt that way.

She knew it wouldn’t bring her sister back, but Ophir would search for the siren’s shape along the dots of the horizon as a final, strange tether to the most awful night of her life.

Once again, she had left her room half-drunk and begun to wander toward the sea. Her guard followed several paces behind, unwilling to let her leave his sight. Through the corridors and toward the back wall of the castle, she exited where Castle Aubade’s vertical, cream walls met the sheer cliffs that dropped into the sea below.

Fourteen weeks had come and gone, forcing her to live with a reality worse than death. Fourteen weeks with the familiar empty space stretched out before her. In the nearly four months that had spread from early summer to the chill of late autumn, there had been no sign of life beyond the fish and crabs that washed up on the shore. She would continue her cycle of waking, drinking, vomiting, burning, screaming, walking into the water, and wishing she had been taken instead of her sister. No relief was coming for her. Ophir was all alone.

Until one day, she wasn’t.

A slim silhouette was relaxing on the cliff, dangling her feet over the edge without a care in the world in the hour before sunset. Ophir stilled at the exit to the castle, clutching at the door when she saw the shape. Her guard doubtlessly recognized the woman from the naked figure that had greeted him all those mornings ago. His hand flew instinctively to the hilt of his sword, but Ophir placed a hand on his wrist, pausing him.

“I’d like to talk to her” was all she said.

Harland promised he’d be nearby if she needed anything. He leaned against the door to the castle’s outer walls and eyed them warily as the shapes of the two women stood out against the horizon.

Ophir had the strange déjà vu that she might be dreaming once again as she felt the sea spray hit her face. The calming sound of waves breaking on the rocks below intermingled with seagulls that bobbed and dove through the pinks and reds of the evening sunset. Dwyn was lounging on the cliff as if it were the most natural thing in the goddess’s lighted kingdom.

“Dwyn?” Ophir closed the space halfway between the custard-colored wall and the spot where the strange, dark fae sat. She meant to speak the name with a sense of authority or recognition, but her rasp had almost no volume at all. The name was stolen on the breeze, lost to the caws of the seagulls that dove and flapped overhead.

Over the gentle, distant sound of the waves, a lilting voice called, “It’s been a while, Firi. How’s the vengeance coming along?”

The princess walked toward her as if approaching a mirage. One wrong move, and surely the dark-haired fae would ripple away and leave her all alone once more. Ophir was a step away from waking up to a fresh sense of abandonment. Any moment now, she’d jolt awake and find herself entirely empty.

Each step she took filled her with increasing confusion as the silhouette grew and Dwyn’s features sharpened into reality against the oranges and pinks of late evening. Was Dwyn truly here? Ophir took a seat beside the fae on the reddish dust. Her hands pressed into the grime and sand of the cliff to support her weight.

“It’s not,” she said, finally answering the question that had been asked of her. Her voice was quiet. She rarely spoke. Her throat was only exercised through the night terrors that shook her from her sleep, dragged and shredded by the thorny stems of roses that ran up and down her vocal passages each and every night.

The siren nodded. “So I hear. The walls have ears, as do the cliffs, and the waves, and the birds.” The wind coming off the sea moved her dark hair around her face and neck as if it were kelp under the waves. Her hair did not tangle or knot against the salt in the air as the hair of so many others did. Instead, she seemed to have a dark halo of cloud-like hair. Dwyn had so many deeply unusual features that one did not typically find on the continent. Ophir hadn’t noticed the shape of her eyes or the gild of her skin the last time they’d been together. She’d been too numb to absorb details. The events following the massacre at Berinth’s home had been a bizarre, dreamlike sequence that she hadn’t been sure if she’d imagined.

“It seems like you haven’t taken my advice very seriously.” The woman’s voice had a musical, foreign quality to it. She spoke the common tongue with a peculiar spice and flavor that Ophir hadn’t remembered from their time together.

“I’ve prayed for vengeance,” Ophir replied.

“I didn’t think you were religious.”

“I’m not.” The princess deflected. “Are you from the Etal Isles?”

Dwyn smiled. “Sulgrave, born and bred. I did come south for the fabled isles, and yet here I am on the cliffs of Aubade. Have you ever met anyone from the Etal Isles?”

Ophir hadn’t. She’d never met anyone from Sulgrave, either. While the people of Farehold tended to possess pink undertones and colorless hair, the only other races of humans and fae she’d known on the continent were the bronzed fae from Raascot, and her time in the throne room as a child when ambassadors from the Tarkhany desert had visited. She’d played with a young Tarkhany boy who claimed he was Prince of the Sands. Dwyn wasn’t from Raascot, nor was she from Tarkhany. Her skin was not the deep northern tan, nor was it the rich, dark browns of the Tarkhany people. There was a faint gild to the undercurrent of Dwyn’s skin, and a tilt to her eyes that Ophir had never seen before. Truth be told, she didn’t give a fuck where Dwyn was from. Any citizen from any kingdom willing to dive into the deepest waters to save her might as well have traveled from the moon.

Dwyn pressed on. “Do you know anyone who’s gone there? The Isles, that is. Does your kingdom conduct any trades with them?”

They didn’t.

“It’s odd, yes. But do you know the strangest part of the Etal Isles?” Dwyn arched a manicured brow as she looked at the princess, studying her face. “The most peculiar thing about the Isles is that no one else finds them unusual. Everyone seems to act like it’s perfectly reasonable for there to be a kingdom and its people a short sea vessel trek away, and yet they’ve never visited. No one from the islands comes to the mainland, just as no one from the continent goes to the Isles. We all pretend it’s not suspicious.” This was clearly something that had been on Dwyn’s mind for a long time.

Ophir didn’t have the energy to argue. She offered, “We don’t trade with Sulgrave, either.”

Dwyn’s laugh was like tinkling bells. “Of course, you don’t. Sulgrave is nearly impossible to reach. Crossing the Frozen Straits is a suicide mission for mortals and fae alike. No one expects trade between our kingdoms. The Etal Isles lack an excuse. They should be only a few days of seafaring from Aubade.”

“Is that why you were in the water that night? The Etal Isles?”

She shrugged. The wind whipped Dwyn’s hair in sharp, dark lines across her face as she gazed at the horizon. “Perhaps it is, perhaps it isn’t. Maybe it’s why I’m in the water every night. For all the world knows, I might be the leading scholar on the Isles. First, I have to figure out how to get there.”

Ophir looked off into the horizon as if she might see the distant shape of a mountain that she hadn’t noticed in her decades of life by the sea. “Is that what you need me for? You want me to get you a ship?”

Dwyn giggled at that as if it were the most ridiculous thing she’d heard. Her gaze flitted away from the princess as she watched another seabird bank against the cliffs, plunging for the water. “No, Firi. There’s nothing you can do for me. This is about what I can do for you.”

“Don’t call me that,” Ophir muttered. The scabbing wound on her soul was reopened and salted by the nickname.

Dwyn’s brows pinched ever so slightly in the center. Her voice softened. “Isn’t that what your friends call you?”

Ophir was quiet for a moment. “I don’t have friends anymore.”

Dwyn clapped her hands together, attention fully present. “Yes, this is what brings me here. There are three paths forward after a tragedy, and you have already attempted the path you’re on. You tried giving up. You swam into the waters with the intent to die, and I saw you in the moment you realized you wanted to live. I witnessed your struggle to keep your head above water. I know there’s a fighting spirit in there somewhere. Though”—Dwyn scanned her body slowly—“it may be buried rather deep.”

Ophir looked over her shoulder to where Harland continued to rest against the wall. He hadn’t let them out of his sight. Perhaps she should take a lesson from his caution.

Her eyes narrowed. “Why are you here, Dwyn? It’s been months. I haven’t seen you, or heard from you, or so much as—”

“Tell me, Firi: what do you want?” She swung her bare feet over the cliff with a fairy-like levity. She was perfectly unbothered by their interaction. Ophir found it refreshing to be around someone whose heart wasn’t broken and who didn’t see her for the husk that she was.

“I want Caris back.”

“Well, that’s not helpful. Try again.”

Ophir felt hot tears threaten to spill over her lids and was glad of the salt spray, as it gave her an excuse for watery eyes. “I want to have been a better daughter and a better sister. I wish I hadn’t been such a bastard. I want to go back in time and—”

“You’re not even trying.”

The fire within Ophir flashed with anger. Her question became a demand as she repeated, “Why are you here, Dwyn?”

“Didn’t you hear me? I came south for the Isles.”

“No,” she said firmly, “why are you here on this cliff? Why bother to return after all of this time? You came into my life and then you left me. I felt like I was crazy—like it had never happened. Why did you leave? Furthermore, why did you bother coming back?”

The Sulgrave fae hummed while she considered. Her breath was a thoughtful, low note scarcely discernible above the sound of the birds and waves. She cocked her chin to the side, allowing the yellow-orange bars of sunset to light her profile.

“Maybe after all of these failed attempts to get to the Etal Isles, I’ve run out of things to do in the south and needed a new project.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Maybe our bath together was just so ravishing that I can’t get your body out of my mind.”

Ophir’s eyes became slits. “I don’t believe that, either.”

Dwyn feigned offense. “Why? You don’t think you have a nice body? Your self-esteem should be higher than that, Princess.”

Ophir motioned as if to get up and leave the cliff when Dwyn waved her down.

“Fine,” she sighed. “I saw you last week standing in the water. You just stood there for nearly an hour, seeing nothing, not moving, just standing knee-deep in the sea. I kept waiting for you to so much as blink, but you didn’t.” Dwyn repositioned her posture so that she turned to fully face the princess. “Of course, I’ve thought about you from time to time—this drowned royal rat of a hopeless princess I’d fished out of the ocean—but I’d assumed things had gotten better. When I saw you… I’ve known suffering, Firi. I’m back because I know what it is to suffer.”

“I asked you not to call me that.”

“Well, too bad. When we first met, you told me it’s what your friends call you. Like it or not, I’m your friend.”

“I don’t like it.”

“Now it’s my turn not to believe you .” Dwyn cocked her head to the side.

Ophir raised her chin and met the woman’s gaze. She didn’t wear the pitying look of the citizens of Farehold, nor the concealed blame that her parents tried to keep from casting on her. It wasn’t the look of helplessness she saw in Harland’s eyes, nor the heartbreak in the faces of the servants. The Sulgrave fae did not pity her.

Dwyn wrapped her fingers around Ophir’s and squeezed them. Her eyes went dark as she whispered, “Tell me what you want.”

“I want the goddess to be real. I want her to be someone who answers prayers. I want to believe she’s doing something about injustice.”

“Liar.”

Anger flashed through Ophir. “How dare you.”

Dwyn met her glare with a challenge. “No one wants prayer. Cut out the middleman, Ophir. Tell me what you truly want.”

She held the challenging stare, but Dwyn did not back down. Thoughts of the night that would not leave her, even now. She still heard the screams. She saw Caris’s blank, unseeing sapphire eyes. She felt the slick sensation of gore between her fingers and the ashes that covered her night after night as the flame consumed her. “I want everyone who hurt my sister to experience ten times over every bit of pain that they caused her. Death is too good for them. I want them afraid. I want them to suffer.”

“Perfect.”